


dai diamanti non nasce niente

by silkspectred



Series: almeno tu [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Brainwashing, F/M, Falling In Love, Injury, Love at First Sight, Nightmares, POV Alternating, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Snowed In, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 08:32:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14398272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkspectred/pseuds/silkspectred
Summary: The next time they meet, he doesn’t recognize her. He tries to kill her.





	dai diamanti non nasce niente

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little buckynat tie-in for _almeno tu nell'universo_. You don't necessarily need to read that fic to understand what's going on here. I took some mild inspiration from my vague memories of the comic Winter Soldier: The Bitter March (2014) by Rick Remender and Roland Boschi. There are also some buckynat quotes from other comics.
> 
> Thanks [tones](https://twitter.com/ironmantrilogy) for beta

Get on the train.

Find the doctor.

Kill him.

These are the three things he knows. The only things that matter. Everything else is inconsequential, not even an afterthought. There’s only the mission.

He accomplishes task number one and task number two easily.

Then, it’s a blur of red hair and thick thighs and clear eyes.

He’s someone else, when he passes out on the floor.

He doesn’t know who.

***

Carrying him to the safe house is no easy feat, but the drones help. They’re Fury’s personal, not SHIELD’s, and that gives Natasha a not small amount of comfort.

The snow is falling steadily. It will cover their traces in no time.

The cabin is cold when she first steps past the door. She fiddles with the thermostat controls and hopes for the best.

She drags him on the bed and strips him of all his weapons, but the arm worries her.

She can’t take it away from him. It’s dangerous.

He has a slash on his thigh. She gave it to him. It’s deep, frayed at the edges and bleeding, but she can’t clean it now. She wraps a piece of cloth around it, knots it tight.

He’s confused when he wakes up. Terrified.

He looks at her and he’s still scared, but something seems to quiet down inside him, too. He meets her gaze only for a handful of seconds at a time, and he always seems to breathe deeper, after.

She gives him a glass of water and he smiles.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

He thinks about it for a very long time. “James,” he replies.

“I’m Natalia,” she says, and doesn’t know why this time she says the truth.

He smiles again.

She likes him.

***

“Who are you?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s not entirely a lie. There seem to be many lives inside his head now, and he has no idea which one is really his.

“Who sent you to kill Dr. Miranda?”

He taps at the red star on his metal arm.

She frowns, but doesn’t say anything about it.

“Brainwashed?”

“What year is it?”

She hesitates. “2008.”

“Brainwashed.”

“I can get you out of it.”

“You can’t. No one can. They’ll come. Others like me. Worse than me. They’ll kill you.”

“I’d love to see them try.”

It’s not that simple.

***

He sleeps. He has a nightmare. He screams.

Natasha stays away, because she knows her limits and she’s not dumb. She stays on the door and bangs a ladle against a pot. He wakes up.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“You seem like you need something warm.”

“I do,” he says, and he doesn’t mean the soup.

***

“How long has it been?”

“I remember… the war.”

“Which one?”

“It was… 1945.”

“Fuck,” she says.

Yeah.

***

“They’ll come get us. My people. As soon as the snow...”

“They’ll come first. They always do.”

“Is this the first time you’ve come back to yourself?”

“They’ve wiped my memory. I don’t know.”

“What made it wear off, though?”

“I’ve got no clue.”

“Love at first sight?”

“Must’ve been.”

***

He stumbles into the bathroom. He strips down and notices the wound on his thigh.

He unwraps it, and watches it bleed.

It bleeds and bleeds and bleeds, and somehow that feels wrong. Somehow, he knows the wound shouldn’t bleed anymore by now. It’s been hours.

“What are you doing?” she says, stepping into the bathroom without knocking, snatching a towel from the rack and pressing it to the cut.

“Kill me. Promise me. You’ve got to. I don’t want ‘em to take me again.”

“They won’t.”

“They will.”

“I won’t let them!” she says, and makes a face. She regrets raising her voice. She cups his face with a bloody hand. “I won’t let them.”

“Why do you even care?”

“Love at first sight,” she says, and twists the faucet open to fill the tub.

***

She waits for him outside. She wants to give him this scrap of dignity. This crumb of humanity.

He doesn’t make a sound.

***

“Natalia?” he says, tying the robe around his waist, watching the drops of condensation slide down the window while he sits on the toilet lid.

“Yes?” she says, pushing the door ajar.

“You think you could cut my hair?”

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t have anything to do it with. There’s only knives in the kitchen.”

He sighs.

She steps into the bathroom to stand in front of him. She lifts his chin up with her fingers.

“I’m really sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he says, touching her elbow.

She’s warm.

***

She stitches him up. He tells her not to waste anesthetics on him. That she shouldn’t waste anything on him.

When she’s done, she lets her hand linger on his thigh. He covers it with his own.

“Why didn’t you leave me there? The real reason.”

“You reminded me of someone.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

She pushes herself back to her feet. He looks up at her face.

“This is dangerous. For you.”

“I know. But someone, years ago, did this for me. I got that chance. I can’t deny it to you.”

“Kill me. I won’t fight back.”

“You’ll fight back. You’ll fight them.”

“You’re risking your life. I’m not worth it.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

She washes her hands of his blood while he stares at her.

“Who were you? Before this?”

“A dancer,” she says. “Russian Ballet. You?”

“A soldier. I’ve always been a soldier.”

“You must have been something else, too. A son, a friend, a brother.”

“Maybe. And you?”

She shrugs. “They’re all dead.”

***

He shouldn’t stay here. It puts her at risk.

He should run.

But he doesn’t.

***

“Do you remember anything? From before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try?”

“I don’t know.”

She won’t insist if he doesn’t want to think about it.

He stares out of the window for an hour. He doesn’t sit on the couch. He stands, even though his thigh must be hurting.

She watches him look at the snow outside. Maybe his mind feels just as blank and empty to him. Just as cold.

“I remember a boy,” he says. “I remember his mother.”

“A friend?”

“Maybe.”

He looks at his fingertips. The metal ones.

***

“How many people have you killed?” he asks her.

“I don’t know. I never kept count, but I would’ve lost it by now if I ever did.”

“How do you... live with—”

“Shh—” she says, reaching up with her arms, locking them around his neck.

 _Yes, kill me_ , he thinks, before realizing it’s a hug.

He touches her hip with his hand. The flesh one.

***

“You didn’t do it. They made you do it,” she tells him, knowing how hard it is to convince yourself of something like that.

“But I did it. I still did it.”

She can’t make him believe anything else.

She lies down on the couch and sleeps.

Hours later, she wakes up. He’s sitting on the floor, looking at her.

“Natalia,” he says, “I’m sorry I hit you. On the train.”

The fact that he feels the need to say it at all tells Natasha everything she needs to know about him.

“James...” she says, and doesn’t know how to finish. Maybe she doesn’t need to. Maybe saying his name is enough.

***

While she showers, he makes a fire. He doesn’t even need to go outside to get wood; there’s a pile right next to the fireplace.

She sits on the rug next to him, turns her head towards the fire so it will dry her hair.

He wants to touch it but doesn’t dare to. Still, he thinks she’d let him.

***

“I’m sorry, Natalia,” he tells her on the third night. She sets the cup of tea down on the table. He made it for her. “I never wanted to get you into trouble. Guess that’s all I’m good at.”

She walks up to him, touches his jaw. “You’re a good man.”

“Not really, no. But you’re the only one who understands that.”

Understanding him is easy, she thinks. It’s having him that isn’t.

***

They come and take him. Of course they do.

She fights, and that makes him fight, too.

But there are too many of them. They’re too ready, too prepared, too ruthless because they don’t have anything to lose. He hopes she’ll survive them.

While they drag him away from her, before they knock him out so he stops struggling, he kisses her.

It’s not a real kiss. It’s lips pressed together too hard and too fast for it to be a real kiss. It’s just desperate.

But she kisses him back.

***

The next time they meet, he doesn’t recognize her. He tries to kill her.

***

The next time they meet, he doesn’t recognize her. He tries to kill her.

***

The sun streams into the room from the windows. It’s warm in Wakanda, but the temperature inside the royal palace is precisely controlled.

The cryo pod hisses and whistles when it’s opened.

When he sees her, he smiles.

***

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he tells her later, after she’s followed him to his room. “I can’t believe they didn’t kill you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come to get you out of there before.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“I think about it all the time.”

He asks her to cut his hair, and this time she does. The dark strands land into the bathroom sink without making a sound, like snow falling on the mountains.

He watches his hair being swallowed by the drain.

He looks at himself in the mirror, and he remembers the person staring back.

She puts a hand on his shoulder, the one that’s not attached to anything yet. He circles her waist with his arm, as if they were dancing.

“I never realized how lost I was without you. All these months I was on the run.”

“I would’ve come if you called.”

“I know. Natalia…”

“James…”

She kisses him.

***

It’s not the first time his head is between her legs, but it’s the first time he makes her scream like this.

His tongue is warm, his fingers thick, and he’s not delicate at all, just the way she likes it.

He kisses her, afterwards, tasting of her, and pushes into her with his eyes wide open.

***

They never fall asleep together. It’s too dangerous.

He watches her as she begins to clean herself up.

“Don’t do that,” he tells her, and reaches over to take her wrist. She lets him push her back on the bed, stomach down. She lets him lick into her.

He tastes himself, he tastes her.

He makes her scream again.

***

“I thought I’d never see you again. But you always amaze me,” he says afterwards, his head resting in the crook of her thigh.

“I think I love you, James Buchanan Barnes,” she tells him.

He’s quiet for a long time. “I don’t know if what’s left of me can love you back like you deserve. I don’t know if I’m—”

“You are,” she says, pushing him so she can stare into his eyes.

“When I’m with you—”

“I _know_.”

***

It’s the morning of his surgery. He’s scared, but not of the pain. He’s scared of what’s ahead of him, of the ghosts he has to fight, of not being strong enough to do it.

But then she comes into the room. She smiles and hugs him. He buries his hand in her red curls and thinks that maybe it was all worth it, if it was for her. Maybe it was all worth it if he can feel like himself again.

“Good morning,” she says. “Nervous?”

“A bit,” he replies.

He kisses her, and he feels like he’s come back home after a very long journey.

  


**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song "Via del Campo" by Fabrizio De Andrè. It's part of a longer line that says "dai diamanti non nasce niente / dal letame nascono i fior" which means "from diamonds nothing is born / from manure flowers are born" (this is the ~official translation from frabriziodeandre.it). I thought it was fitting since a recurring motif in _almeno tu nell'universo_ and in this fic (but honestly, in most of my fics) is the idea that even if you went through some pretty horrifying shit in the past, that shit made you who you are now. And if all that stuff led you to love a specific someone and to be loved back, then maybe you can live with it. I swear in my head it's very uplifting. 
> 
> Anyway. Hope you liked this fic! The next coda is coming soon! Leave me a comment if you want <3
> 
> On [tumblr](http://silkspectred.tumblr.com/post/173193142270/)  
> On [twitter](https://twitter.com/starkspectre/status/988089672760004608)


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